I have a friend who once told me, face full of woe, that no relationship and no friendship is every equal. There is always a giver and taker.

I didn't like hearing that one bit, but I couldn't work out why. Looking back, it looks at soft, rich things as mathematical, looked at as countable units, not qualities which survive on their own merits. If you're counting up every gesture and quantifying every emotion, of course they don't balance perfectly, and thinking along those lines will be your undoing!

I see versions of this all over the place. If you live with others, the chores will never be perfectly apportioned, and it's unlikely that everyone will bring home toilet paper in full accordance with their usage. Rotas are one imperfect solution. Conversations can make matters slightly better or a lot worse. Obsessing over an imbalance or injustice is the quietest option, but also the worst.

The household is the smallest unit of society. Some of us want to bring peace and justice on Earth, but struggle to find it at home, and this is a problem. It's the old classic, “everyone wants a revolution but noone wants to do the washing up”. (I often mix this up with another wonderful line, “in a utopia, who empties the bins?”).

The Finger of Blame

Some of us point the finger of blame inwards. I know folks with chronic pain, exhaustion, or ADHD who feel guilt over receiving more help than they give. I've known friends who are without jobs or homes who feel guilty that people help them financially more than they help others, and people feeling shame that they consume more than they produce. If we're wedded to a view of justice as perfect, like-for-like balance, we blame ourselves for circumstances beyond our control.

There are no simple solutions to any of this – and besides, if I provided all the answers you wouldn't have anything to ponder for yourself, and then where would we be? I do think Marx's “to each according to their need, from each according to their ability” is somewhere to start from, and I'm inclined to bring in some New Testament ideas of being a cheerful giver (as opposed to a bitterly begrudging one), or of a society where we're all servants. It's a good mindset, though it helps when everyone else is playing along, less so when you live with someone who's quite certain they're a boss.

I've had housemates before who couldn't help me as much as I could help them, and I occasionally ventured, “so what if you aren't the one who bought the snacks/took out the rubbish today: you still gave the cat good attention and affection/supported your friend, etc. today”. In retrospect, this may have been a patronising response, but I do believe things of different scales, and in different economies, are more than sufficient. If you want to compare apples and oranges or chalk and cheese, you can set a generous exchange rate.

There's no simple system to attaining fairness. You can lay down a whole lot of rules, or you can each try to do slightly more than your fair share and agree to cut each other some slack. I recommend the latter, but it only works if you're willing to communicate honestly, plenty, and in good faith. If you can make it work at home, maybe we can make it work in the rest of the world.

Friend Time

I stayed in a hostel in Cologne this week. I was daunted by the prospect of sharing a room with strangers, but my own stinginess, and the shortage of hotels available during Gamescom season, made it a necessity. Reader, it was excellent, on a par with the early days of student lodgings. New friends, and you get to spend chatting and comparing notes each night and each morning. We all snored, too, which means none of us had especial cause for complaint. Earplugs were a boon.

I specify early student lodgings because it's easy to get on with almost anybody for four nights. Had the four room-mates shared for longer than a week, things might have become more strained. Lines might have needed to be drawn, elephants addressed, habits odours acknowledged. (Probably my own).

It tend to think of a household as the smallest unit of society, but maybe this kind of hostel or student setup is the closest to reality: we don't choose our neighbours.

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Advice to my Student Self

My university digs were still appear in my dreams, representing a time surrounded by friends. The housing block itself was nothing special. My parents thought it looked like a prison. To me, it was freedom, friend time and independence. I took my name from that housing block: it was called Swithen. I took it as the surname of my pen-name, Ben Swithen, which is now my actual name as well. Swithen the house was bulldozed a decade ago, but it's still visitable in my dreams.

There are a great many things I wish I'd done differently at university, but the one that I'd tell my student self, if I had the opportunity: I wish I'd kept on top of the washing up. Even if it wasn't all my doing. There were five of us sharing one kitchenette, and I wish I'd aimed to fifty percent of the manky plates, rather than aiming for a fair twenty percent. Keeping the fridge in order, too.

(As ever when I think “I wish I'd done that differently in the past,” I should probably try applying that to my current life as well. That fridge isn't going to sort itself).

Perhaps that's the better way to attain a workable society, something akin to balance, but without the penny-pinching stat-tracking that implies. If we proactively try to do a bit more than what we think is fair, we might end up with the fairest system. According to our ability, natch.

Fair reward

My ideal is very much “everyone pitch in as you can”, bartering services as graciously as possible, but we should at least consider other options. An alternative model calls for paid housework. A fair wage for what is undeniably labour. We all have a different ratio of time and money available, and this way you can give your available money for someone’s available time. “Available” rather than “spare”, because the phrase “spare time” sounds like a precious thing to spend as you wish.

Payment within households feels a little weird — perhaps I just harbour a middle-class sense of vulgarity around the discussion of money — but it does have a familiar precedent: teen children being financially rewarded for mowing the lawn. In that situation everyone wins: the parent can avoid a tedious chore and the teen can supplement their allowance. I’m inclined to suggest all children should be mucking in with quite a range of chores, partly to assist the rest of the household, but mainly so they develop a few skills before they someday move out. If you don’t know the basics of washing, cooking and cleaning, that’s a problem for you, but a bigger problem for everyone around you.

It remains an open question, though: how can we make our households work fairly and well, and how can we scale that to to society at large? Geeks for Social Change is rooted in the belief that society can be changed, and for the better, and we're a member-run organisation, so you're more than welcome to get actively involved with us and with the world. If you have any thoughts, feel free to leave comments here or come and join the conversation over on our Discord.